ROOTBOT — Chat manager

2022 released
2 min read
TelegramChat ManagerEconomy
ROOTBOT — chat manager preview

ROOTBOT (@Ban_Root_bot) is the Telegram product most people remember from ROOTWIN’s middle years. It started as a chat manager. It ended as a small operating system for groups: moderation, an in-bot economy, admin tooling, and a pile of utilities that lived in the same command list.

What chats actually used

  • Antispam — flood of messages, stickers, GIFs, and ad links, toggled with /antispam.
  • ROOTCOIN — transfers, earning, buying channels or shoutouts, mini-casino, “hacking” other players for coins.
  • Admin panel — /admin, banned-word lists with match percent, auto-delete links, complaints, invite rules.
  • Classic mod commands — ban, mute, warn, kick, pin, plus a “root snap” that applied actions to a list of user IDs.
  • Inline buttons so you were not typing a novel of slash commands.
  • Promo codes around updates and holidays.

At peak the bot had more than 50 commands. User tools included password and QR generation, AES-256 encrypt/decrypt (DM-only for privacy), OCR, a calculator, Wikipedia, IP lookup, jokes, HTTP-status memes, a magic 8-ball, and an Eliza-style chatbot. /donate (from 0.3 TON) unlocked extras. In December 2023 we also shipped a lifetime premium for a one-time donation from 200 RUB: file locker (up to 10 MB per file), encrypt/decrypt, banlist lookup, nickname, chat-link boosts, anonymous DMs.

Timeline in short

First beta: November 2022. Open beta with ROOTCOINS, promo codes, mini-casino, and factions: December 2022. VPS move and /antispam: March 2023. Pivot away from casino-first toward moderation: August 2023. Admin UI, inline controls, 50-language translator, /search for cross-chat matchmaking: September 2023. Full command directory on Teletype: 28 October 2023 (updated version now on-site: ROOTBOT command guide). Premium: 8–9 December 2023.

Support answered in the project chat. The bot ran on a VPS with an eye on latency and near-daily patches.

Why it still matters

ROOTBOT was the lab. We learned how fast a community burns through features, how antispam has to survive a raid, and that an economy can fund a server without being the whole product. Those habits show up later in SafeDigitalBot and in how ROOTCHAT is run.

The product line is closed. The ideas are not.

Command directory

The full interactive ROOTBOT command guide covers admin panel features, moderation commands, and user utilities with screenshots and examples.